


Hour by Hour; Moment by Moment

by muirgen_lys



Category: Dragon Age II
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Chronic Pain, Complicated Relationships, Friendship, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Magic Healing, Past Abuse, Past Torture, Trauma, pre-fenders - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-12
Updated: 2019-10-21
Packaged: 2020-12-09 16:02:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,339
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20997524
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/muirgen_lys/pseuds/muirgen_lys
Summary: Anders has his share of scars: old injuries that twinge when he steps wrong, that wake him up at night when the weather changes, and pull at the back of his mind when he's trying to work. He's used to putting up with the constant background ache, compensating for old damage with healing spells and tightly wrapped bandages. Most of the time people don't notice anything is wrong. But some days are worse than others, and when he can't keep the mask up any more, Fenris takes notice.





	1. Chapter 1

It was early morning, dawn just beginning to colour the horizon, and there was blood all over his hands.

“It lives!” a voice declared. Behind him, the baby's weak cry confirmed the words. Anders sent up a brief prayer of thanks, but spared the child no further attention. He had his hands full trying to control the hemorrhage that was turning the mother steadily greyer with each passing second. 

He shifted, keeping pressure with hands and magic on the girl's belly. His bad knee protested taking his weight in the awkward position and he ignored it, clenching his teeth. His arm had been throbbing for an hour now. He just needed to buy himself a few minutes...

“Merrill,” he said, “you're a-” _blood mage_. He strangled the words before anyone could hear. Even in the alienage there were sometimes Templars around, and he wouldn't bring the chantry down on an innocent mage, however risky her practices. “I'm going to have to let go to heal her,” he said instead. “Try to keep the blood inside.”

“What's happening?” asked the elvhen woman at the head of the bed. Her voice was hoarse but steady, her daughter's limp hand clutched tightly in both of hers.

“It was a long labour,” he said. “The womb is exhausted; it isn't clamping down as it should to stop the bleeding. I can fix it, but I need Merrill to hold off the bleeding, and I need quiet so I can work.” 

He dragged at his sparse reserves of mana, worn down from the aftermath of a minor tunnel collapse that afternoon, and from keeping the child alive through the difficult labour, and threaded his magic into the overstretched fibres and twisting blood vessels of the woman's womb. 

Back to work.

Most of an hour later, in the weak light of early morning, he pushed himself unsteadily to his feet, ignoring another warning twinge in his knee, and declared both mother and child provisionally safe. The mother would need fluids as soon as she was awake to swallow them, and the child would need watching, to be sure it had suffered no subtle harm in the minutes it had taken Merrill to call him, but both would live.

The baby's grandmother had released her sleeping daughter's hand in order to hold her grandson. She gazed down at him with a slightly satisfied smile, rocking him gently. Even tired as he was, the sight brought a smile to Anders' lips as well. It was far from the worst ending he'd seen for being called to a bad birth in the middle of the night.

His good mood carried him through the streets of lowtown and into darktown, a lightness in his heart that made the dim, grimy light of the undercity a little brighter. He took his time getting back to the clinic – If there was an emergency, someone would find him, and the awkward positions he'd found himself holding during the birth had been a strain on his battered joints – not so much pain yet, not with every step at least, but the awareness that it was coming if he pushed himself any further. It was worth a few extra minutes to move carefully, leaning a little against the tunnel wall to take the weight off his right side. 

All he needed was a few lyrium potions and to catch up on a few of the many hours of sleep he'd missed that night, and he might even be fit to work in the morning.

So naturally it was less than half an hour later that he woke to Hawke pounding on his door.

***

“Just a small run up to the coast,” Anders growled under his breath. “We won't even _need_ weapons!”

He dropped a fireball on the slaver mage, and fumbled for the second of the two lyrium potions Hawke had managed to supply him with, uncorking it and draining it to the dregs in a single motion. A brief rush of mana coursed through him, but he was painfully aware that it was not enough. 

_Nothing to be done for it now._ He flung a healing spell at Isabela, catching her in mid-leap, and sagged back, watching two more slavers run towards him. 

_Damn it Hawke._

  


Fenris snapped his blade up, catching the rogue's dagger and sending it flying. The rogue tried to bring his other blade into play, but he'd underestimated Fenris' speed, and Fenris was already long gone. He waited a heartbeat for the wild thrust to throw off the man's balance, then struck, cleaving through the man's spine.

Watching the body fall, he felt a flicker of something he couldn't name. The man had been young, and childishly overconfident, clever with his knives and fool enough to believe that quick hands would make him a match for a warrior out of legends. Fenris might have felt sorry for him, if not for the manacles hanging from his belt.

He stepped over the body and made for the enemy mage. 

Anders whipped his staff around, catching the swordsman on his left across the thigh and dropping him to one knee with a sickening thud. The twisting motion put his weight at the wrong angle on his bad leg and he stumbled as it gave out, caught himself on a root protruding from the crumbling embankment and hauled himself back to his feet just in time to unleash a wave of ice at the man coming up behind Hawke. That man ground to a halt, frost forming across his skin, and Anders turned back to finish off his own assailant with a wave of magical force.

He stepped back gingerly and surveyed the field. Isabela was taking on two at once, holding her own, her hands flashing faster than he could follow. Hawke had gutted the one he'd frozen, and was driving another back against the cliffs, dancing in and out of sword range on the heavier warrior. Fenris-

Fenris was laying into the slaver mage like a charging bronto, absorbing one blast after another from the woman's staff as he battered at her defensive spells. She faltered under the onslaught, her attacks growing more fumbling and and desperate, and despite his exhaustion Anders felt a brief rush of vicarious satisfaction. As a healer, perhaps he ought to have had more qualms. But as a mage, and one who had spent too much of his life in chains, he would shed no tears for someone who turned her power to such vile ends.

He was so caught up in watching the battle that he missed the second slaver creeping up on Fenris' left. The rogue appeared out of nowhere, materializing from a stand of scrubby brush that couldn't possibly have concealed a person his size to loop a thin cord around the elf's neck and jerk him backwards.

Fenris was equally surprised, but adapted quickly, moving with the force and turning the fall into a controlled roll that brought him up facing his new enemy. But the cord was still looped around his neck, and the slaver jerked it tight as Fenris grabbed for it. He managed to get two fingers inside, which kept him breathing, but now he was fighting one-handed. Worse, he had his back to the mage, who was gathering herself for a more complex working that Anders was fairly sure would do the elf real harm.

No time for subtlety. He pushed off from the bank behind him, praying his legs would hold him as he surged forward, gathering the tattered shreds of his mana. The last of his sustained spells dissolved and fell apart as he stripped away the power that had maintained them, using it to burn through the rope around Fenris' neck, and throwing the last dregs into a jolt of lightning, which he flung at the enemy spellcaster as she raised her hands.

Fenris, released from the rope, moved like lightning himself. He surged forward, his sword flashing as the slaver mage stumbled back, and the rogue who had snared him went down in a welter of blood. Then he was on the mage. His first cut took her across the chest, spattering blood across the sand. His second took off her head.

The beach was abruptly very quiet. Anders' body wavered as the rush of battle drained out of him. Pain flooded back to the surface of his awareness, stronger now for the loss of the healing spells that normally kept it to a dull roar. He sagged against a tree, indulging in a few seconds weakness while no eyes were on him, then straightened and forced steel into his spine and spring into his steps, ignoring the sudden anguished throbbing in his knee. 

_It's just pain_, he reminded himself wearily. _It's not doing any damage, it's just unpleasant. Which can't be helped at this point, so buck up and carry on._

He started down the trail, determinedly not limping. If that enemy mage had any lyrium on her he might be able to patch up that cut on Hawke's shoulder before they started back.

Fenris wiped his blade on the dead mage's robes, sheathed it, and turned to look around. Dead men littered the beach, variously armed and armoured. At least half carried some instrument of their trade – chains to bind their captives, whips and drugged flasks to keep them quiet. 

Fenris, gazing across the mess, felt exhausted by more than just the day's skirmish. 

He walked over to the young rogue he'd killed and nudged the body with one foot, flipped him over. The corpse's face still held an echo of the expression of furious shock, it had worn when Fenris had taken him down. 

_We kill twelve of them today, and tomorrow another twelve take their places._

“It never ends.”

“What doesn't?” asked Hawke.

“This.” He gestured vaguely at the scattered corpses with their armament of chains and shackles. “Slavers, blood mages...those with power preying on those without.”

“They made a choice.” Anders voice was weary, but there was venom in it under the surface. “And they paid for it. This lot, at least, won't be taking any more children.”

There might have been a flicker of blue in his eyes...or maybe it was just the light.

“You are one to talk about choices,” Fenris replied. 

Anders grimaced and turned away, and Fenris sighed. He had not meant...

_I was calling you a fool, not a slaver._

He could not accept that there was any justification for making a pact with a demon, and there was no denying that Anders was a fool to have done so. But if there was one thing Fenris had finally concluded about him, it was that he had not done it for power. 

Fenris had seen mages who made deals in pursuit of power, seen the luxury and decadence and carefree destructiveness of their lives. Anders ramshackle clinic in the undercity and ineffectual crusading against the Chantry's laws was a far cry from it.

But Anders would likely not take any kinder to being called a fool, and attempts at clarification between him and Fenris usually ended badly, each of them taking the worst possible meaning from the other's words.

In truth, Fenris had long since tired of it. But they had made a pattern of arguing now, and neither of them knew how to break it.

“We should move on,” he said. “We've only a few hours to make it back to the city before nightfall.”

***

They would not make it back by nightfall.

At first it had been Isabela holding them up. The pirate was like a crow, ever on the hunt for shiny objects. She was perpetually spotting something just off the track that she needed to investigate, some body or old crate that had washed ashore. Hawke indulged her, in no small part, he thought, because Hawke was half-packrat herself. Her expedition to the Deep Roads might have brought her wealth and position, but she had never shed the habit of collecting everything of value she could lay hands on. 

Anders had not joined them in their scavenging. In fact the mage had been unusually quiet the entire walk back. Fenris wondered at first if he might inadvertently have struck at some buried hurt with his earlier words, but as the afternoon wore on with Anders making no effort to strike at him in turn, he concluded that it must be something else. It wasn't just the uncharacteristic silence – the mage was tight-lipped and off balance, favouring his right side, and seemed to be getting worse, not better, as they walked. He leaned more heavily on his staff, and when they stopped his hand went unconsciously to the bandages he wore at knee and elbow, wrapping them a little tighter or massaging absently at the joints.

Finally Fenris dropped back to where the mage hobbled along the rocky track, and pitched his voice so the others would not overhear. “Are you quite well, mage?”

“Fine,” said Anders irritably, in the tone of a man who was definitely not fine.

Fenris looked him over, taking in the paleness of his face, the tension in his shoulders and jaw, the white lines around his lips where they pressed together, the deathly-tight grip on his staff. He had not been so badly off on the journey out here. Had he been injured in the fight? Fenris ran back over the battle in his mind, not recalling any unusually hard blow the mage had taken. But combat was chaotic, and Fenris had not been watching him every moment.

He asked as much, and Anders bristled, his voice growing even sharper than before. 

“I said I'm fine!” he snapped, jerking away from the hand Fenris had unconsciously raised to help him over a patch of uneven ground. He stumbled, and stifled a cry behind clenched teeth as he caught himself. He pulled himself upright, resuming his steady, difficult progress. “Nothing happened to me today,” he said. Acidly, he added, “And my petty _weaknesses_ are none of your blighted business.”

Fenris eyed him coolly. He knew better than to take offense at the mage's wounded snappishness. There was no insult in the man's words, no slight against Fenris' character or history, no veiled implication that he was no better than Danarius. The mage was in pain, that was all, and Fenris had seen enough pain in his life to know how it could make one short-tempered and sharp-tongued. It was nothing personal - which made it something of an improvement on their usual arguments. 

He thought for a moment, about calling up to Hawke, asking for a halt whether the mage wanted it or not. It might do the man good, to rest a while. 

But Anders seemed not to wish anyone to notice...whatever was going on with him. And for all Fenris knew the best thing for him would be to get back to his clinic, with his medicines and poultices, as soon as possible. 

So after a long, thoughtful moment, he gave a deliberate nod and turned back to the trail, leaving the mage to his private struggle. 

***

“I think I can get two sovereigns for the lot,” said Hawke, rifling through the bag of random junk she had pulled off the slavers and combed off the beach. “which makes five all together, with the coin those bastards had on them. Shall we meet at the Hanged man tomorrow? I'll see everyone gets paid then.”

They gave their agreements to this plan – Isabela's a saucy grin, Anders' only an exhausted nod - and began to go their separate ways. Fenris turned to follow Hawke up the stairs toward hightown, but stopped halfway up the stairs, his conscience gnawing at him.

The mage was injured, in some way, Fenris was sure of it. Hawke and Isabela might not have noticed, but he had. And however badly he and Anders got on, the thought of the mage collapsing somewhere in the tunnels between the city gates and his clinic sat ill with him. He would blame himself, if such a thing were to happen when he could have prevented it. And from the mage's pain-lined face and white-knuckled grip on his staff as they had entered the city, the scenario seemed all too likely.

It did not have to turn into another occasion for a fight, after all. They need not even discuss it. He could follow at a distance, and if Anders arrived at his clinic without incident, Fenris would simple get home and hour or two later than he would have otherwise. 

He scowled. He did not want to escort the mage home. He wanted to go home himself, and clean the dust and blood from his armour, and rest. 

But he had learned much about having friends, and comrades, over the years since his escape. And whatever their faults, Fenris was not a man who abandoned his friends. Not anymore. 

He glanced back over his shoulder, thinking of the bright fires and spacious bathing facilities in his stolen manor. Then he sighed and followed the mage.


	2. Chapter 2

Anders cursed under his breath as he made his interminable way from the gates down to the undercity, pausing every few steps to rest his now-screaming knee. His invective covered Hawke, slavers, Templars, nosy elves who poked into other people's business, and himself, both for agreeing to this in the first place and for the way he'd snapped at Fenris on the trail. 

He thought back to his reaction to the elf's gentle prying and flinched a little, feeling guilty. He and Fenris were...contentious. The elf needled him, got under his skin in a way the harsh words of strangers never did. It felt sometimes as though every second word out of Fenris' mouth was some subtle accusation or cutting comment: veiled or not-so-veiled hints that he was dangerous, volatile, mindless, untrustworthy – everything the Templars said that mages were. And Anders reacted every time, lashing out at him like a child.

It was partly that he'd wanted something different from that relationship, once. Fenris had seemed so similar to him, on the surface. A runaway, a man who had shed his chains and taken his freedom, and defended it against all comers. Anders had been charmed, had hoped that they could be friends. That they might understand each other. 

Instead they had been like oil and water from the first exchange. Fenris digging at his personal guilt and grief – and fear – in the public street, and Anders turning on him in defensive fury and icy terror, saying whatever it took to silence him. Or vice versa. He still remembered the flood of anxiety and battle-readiness that had rolled through him when Fenris had, out of nowhere, asked him at full volume in a public street if he was an Abomination. He had snapped back, and that had set the tone of every interaction they'd had since. One of them asked questions – innocent or otherwise – and the other shot them down with a cutting comment or a personal jab. It was stupid, childish, pointless...

Fenris' comments that evening were a perfect example. There had been no subtle threats, not this time at least, no hidden meanings or insulting assumptions. It had been a perfectly innocent question, and a perfectly civil offer of help. And Anders had snapped at him anyway, like an idiot, like exactly the out-of-control monster Fenris took him for, just because it was Fenris. Oh, he might be a little more on edge because of the persistent, stabbing pain in his knee, but he wouldn't have taken it out on Hawke, or on one of his patients, like that. Just Fenris. 

And the elf hadn't even responded in kind, hadn't risen to the bait: just taken the rude reply in stride and walked away. Which made Anders feel even more of an arse than he had already. 

He paused again to breathe, and let the agony in his leg subside a little. One of darktown's ubiquitous street urchins, a kid he'd treated a few times for broken arms and bruises, caught his eye. The boy sidled closer and looked over the contents of a smuggler's trade box, giving every impression of looking for something small enough to steal. The smuggler glared at him suspiciously. 

“Thought you oughtta know,” said the boy, low enough that no one but Anders and perhaps the smuggler would hear, “you've got a shadow. Good one too, not one o' them clumsy templars.”

The inhabitants of darktown held the Templars' lack of stealth in some contempt. Armoured knights tended to clomp down the stairs to the undercity in threes and fours, shouting for the inhabitants to bring out any suspected mages and causing a ruckus that could be heard all up and down the tunnels. Those who made their makeshift homes in the sewers knew them as bullies, happy to kick a child out of the way, or step on a beggar who didn't move aside fast enough, but they never had to worry about being caught unawares by their patrols. 

“Carta?”

The kid shrugged. “Dunno,” he said. “Don't think so. He ain't a dwarf. Elf maybe, or a right skinny human. Got a sword though.”

Anders' eyes narrowed. “This elf - white tattoos lined up and down his arms?”

A nod. “An' white hair. You want I should distract 'im for you?”

Anders sighed. “No, thank you. He's a friend. Though I do appreciate the warning.”

“Anytime, healer,” the boy grinned. “That arm you fixed up is good as gold still. Don't even ache no more like the other one.”

“Good,” he said. His own old injuries were shouting for his attention, and he desperately wanted to just be back in his clinic, and sitting down. “Come by the clinic in the next few days if you have a chance and I'll see if I can find some pastries for you.”

It would be an expense, he thought, but he liked to encourage helpful neighbours.

***

He caught Fenris coming around the next blind corner. He didn't try for surprise; he knew the elf's well-honed reflexes well enough to know that startling him was unwise. Just waited in plain sight, and raised an eyebrow when he saw Fenris' eyes catch on his.

Was it his imagination, or did the elf actually blush? 

He jerked his head, and led the elf toward an alcove where they could talk. “If it's healing you're looking for, I can't do any more tonight,” he said, once they were alone, though he suspected already that that wasn't what this was. 

“I don't need healing,” Fenris replied. “I thought to make sure you did not collapse in some out of the way corner before you make it home.”

Anders bristled despite himself. “I've walked home in more pain than this, I'll have you know. Hawke doesn't need to send you to babysit me.”

Fenris' jaw set a little harder, but he only said evenly, “_Hawke_ does not know I'm here.”

Anders opened his mouth to reply, then closed it. Fenris taking it upon himself to make sure Anders got home intact was no less irritating than Hawke doing so, but far more surprising. Like the conversation earlier that day, when Fenris had taken Anders' needlessly-harsh rejection without a word of rejoinder. He didn't quite know what to make of it.

“Alright,” he said at last, collecting his scattered wits, “It's a public street. Come if you like. But walk with me openly if you're going to follow me; you're making my neighbours nervous.”

That got a snort of amusement from the elf, but he nodded, and they set off again together at Anders' slow, limping pace, making their way towards the clinic.

***

Fenris lasted about 40 heartbeats, watching Anders limp about his clinic attempting to put things to his liking, before he lost patience.

“Fasta vass. Enough. Sit, mage, before you do yourself an injury.”

“In a moment,” said Anders. “If I don't treat this now it will take a week to settle instead of a few days, and I can't be out of commission that long. It's just a few more things.”

“Tell me what needs to be done then, and I will do it,” said Fenris. 

Anders hesitated for several breaths. Then relented, handing over the supplies he'd gathered with an exhausted murmur of thanks. He gestured to the fireplace, which now held a cheery blaze, started with flint and steel, and rattled off a string of instructions. Fenris followed them step by step. Anders' written labels gave him brief pause, but Fenris knew the smells of the different herbs, and he managed well enough, warming a pot of small stones in water, then pouring off the water to heat for tea, and packing the hot stones into a thick cloth bag which Anders pressed against his knee with a sigh of relief. They sat together while the water heated and the tea steeped, and the smell of elfroot and willow and something else dry and spicy began to rise from it. 

Anders poured the first cup and handed it to Fenris, keeping the second for himself. “It doesn't taste the best,” he warned. “the ingredients are more medicinal than flavourful I'm afraid. I drink it with honey sometimes, when I can afford it, but I'm out this week.”

He took a long, careful sip, letting out a breath of satisfaction. Then he set down the tea and the hot pack, and began unwrapping the bandage around his knee, pulling up his trousers to reveal a thick scar sitting just to the side of the kneecap. The joint was mis-shapen and distorted to Fenris' eyes. Anders poked at it, grimacing, then picked up a pot of salve from beside him and began gently, purposefully working the gooey stuff over the joint with his fingers, wincing occasionally when he put pressure on the wrong places.

“How long have you had this injury?” asked Fenris softly. He did not want to pry, but he felt drawn to try to understand. And somehow the act of sitting here, drinking tea he had made and watching the mage's fire crackle brightly, seemed to make space for such questions. 

“A long time,” said Anders. “longer ago than I care to think about now.” He wiped his fingers on his robes, and tried a few gentle movements, flexing and straightening his leg. There seemed to be less wincing now, at least. Fenris assumed that was a good sign. 

“Was it a battle wound then?”

Anders laughed. “Only by the most liberal definition.” He sobered, his fingers finding the bandage and starting to re-wrap it. “It was my fifth escape from the tower. I led the templars on a merry chase, including through a swamp and into a blackberry bramble. They weren't any too pleased when they caught up with me. The knight-lieutenant set to guard me that night decided to take some extra precautions against me slipping away again, and pinned me to my bedroll with her poignard.” 

He finished tying off the bandage, and for a moment his hands fluttered, as though at a loss for something to do, before coming to rest uncomfortably in his lap. 

“She broke my elbow too,” he said. His opposite hand, as though in response, crept up to rub at the joint in question. “But I think that was just for spite.” Almost as an afterthought he added “They told Greagoire it had happened while trying to subdue me. Unavoidable. I don't know if he believed them – it wasn't a very plausible story – but he never questioned it.”

Fenris felt himself growing very still, his mind skirting against the edges of things he could not remember, and other things he could remember but did not particularly want to. For a moment he imagined telling the mage his own stories, times he had had to bear some petty cruelty or humiliation in silence because those who could have done something about it were not on his side, or simply didn't care.

He didn't. He and the mage were not close in that way, and Fenris had learned long and hard to keep his trust closely guarded. But he could feel that something had shifted in the way he looked at Anders, the fear of what the healer might do and become growing...not less, perhaps, but more complicated, with the knowledge of some small piece of what had been done to him. 

“I'm surprised that a healer would have such lasting effects,” he said, though he wasn't, not really. Not anymore. 

Anders gave him a crooked, mirthless smile. “Crippling me was rather the point, Fenris,” he said. “They kept me well dosed with magebane, and forbade me from seeing the other healers, until it had scarred over. I think they hoped it would slow me down the next time I got away from them.”

“Did it?” asked Fenris. 

Anders shrugged. “My next escape lasted 6 weeks,” he said. “A personal best, at the time. So no, not especially.”

“What's your personal best now?” 

Anders smiled again, a little more genuinely this time. “5 years, 2 months, and counting.” He took another sip of tea, and closed his eyes. “I wonder sometimes if they'd have given up at some point, without the wardens' intervention. But then, they didn't give up even after I was with the wardens, so probably not. Maybe if I was some random apostate, instead of mad, bad Anders who played pranks on Templars and led knight-lieutenants into swamps, they'd be less determined about it.” 

His eyes flicked to Fenris, then back to the fire, and he added, “The one who stuck her knife through me told me later she considered it fair payback for making her slog through mud for four hours. I considered it unwise to point out that she could have just let me go and avoided the mud altogether.”

“Your wisdom is...”

“Commendable?”

“Surprising.”

Anders laughed. “You wouldn't be the first to say so.”

Fenris' tea was almost gone; he'd somehow drunk most of it without noticing. He felt...good. He wasn't sure if it was the tea, or the warmth of the fire, but somehow his own limbs seemed to be moving a little more freely. He looked down at his empty cup. 

“It doesn't taste good,” said Anders, “But it does the job.” He nodded at the cup in Fenris' hands. “I can give you some to take home, if you like.”

“That...would be appreciated,” said Fenris. 

“I recognize that look,” Anders said, swirling his tea. “Strange, isn't it, how much you get used to that sort of relentless pain. You get in the habit of putting up with it. Pushing through. Until it's so much a part of you that you almost don't notice yourself working around it until, for a few moments, you don't have to.”

“Well said,” said Fenris. Because yes, that was what he was feeling. The lessening of his body's perpetual protests: a looseness between his shoulders where normally there was a snarl of tense muscles, a lightness in his arms where the lurking ache of the lyrium seemed to have faded to a whisper. He felt _comfortable_ in a way he wasn't sure he had even known was possible. For a moment he felt a stab of anger and bitter envy. It was one more thing that the lyrium ritual had taken from him – not just the feeling of comfort in his body, but the memory of it as well. But sitting here, comfortable by a fire, was not the time to process that new grief, and he set it aside. 

“I think it's a design flaw,” Anders went on. “The Maker should have given us a switch we could flip, or a part we could take off. 'Sorry, I don't want to feel pain today! I'll turn it back on tomorrow.' Terrible planning, leaving that out. We ought to put in a complaint about it.”

Fenris raised an eyebrow. “If you're taking a committee straight to the Maker to critique his creations, I can think of other things I would complain about.”

“Of course,” said Anders. “The complaints committee takes all comers.” He laughed, and Fenris couldn't help smiling a little in response. Then the mage sobered, and looked back down at his tea. “It wears on you,” he said. “It's exhausting, being in pain all the time. Saps your energy. Sometimes... sometimes you just want a rest. The tea doesn't take it away completely, but it helps.” 

Fenris had nothing to say to that, so he kept silent, and for a few seconds the fire was the only sound in the deserted clinic. 

“I should apologize,” said Anders, “for earlier.” Fenris frowned, and the mage clarified, “On the trail back. I... you were just trying to help. I probably shouldn't've...”

“Pain makes people short tempered,” said Fenris. Looking back down at his cup, he added, “I have been...unfairly harsh, myself. On rare occasions. Especially when my brands are bothering me. I did not take it personally.”

“There's a first,” said Anders dryly. 

Fenris snorted. “We do seem to be...prone to such misunderstandings. Both of us.”

“Perhaps a little,” conceded Anders, smiling again. It made him look lighter somehow, almost as much as the loss of the white-lipped strain he had carried since their battle with the slavers. 

He had a nice smile, Fenris thought. Nicer still when Fenris was the cause of it, rather than merely an unwelcome bystander to someone else's conversation. 

“I'm glad I gave no offense,” Anders told him. “And I do appreciate your help tonight. I don't usually let it get quite that bad...it makes a big difference to have help.”

“It was little enough,” said Fenris, feeling suddenly awkward. Hawke's casual thanks after a job he knew how to deal with. This earnest gratitude was something else, and he felt himself pushing to his feet. “I should-”

“Of course,” said Anders, looking away. “I didn't mean to keep you. No doubt you want to go clean up.”

“If you still need anything-”

“No, I should be alright. Rest, and time, is all there is to it now. I won't be good for much for a day or two though.”

“In that case...I assume you can be trusted to actually rest, rather than sitting up all night writing or jumping up to go visit plague victims.”

Anders laughed. “Now you sound like Hawke.”

“Perish the thought.”

“Don't forget your tea.” He took the packet the mage handed him, their hands brushing briefly as they passed it across, and then Fenris turned and waved an awkward farewell as he headed out into the night.

***

“You're avoiding the issue,” said Anders, exasperated. Fenris raised an irritatingly imperturbable eyebrow, and Anders rolled his eyes. “The amount of unsupervised power that the Templars hold over Circle mages-”

“Is substantially less than the power a magister wields over his slaves,” said Fenris flatly. “And the chantry has rules regarding the treatment of the mages in its care.”

Anders snorted. “And Tevinter has laws against blood magic. If you think those rules are worth the paper they're printed on, you're the most naive-” 

Caught up in the argument, gesturing with his staff to emphasize his point, he'd forgotten to keep an eye on the rough ground of the wounded coast. He caught his foot on a rock and stumbled, wincing in anticipation of pain. But instead of landing on his bad knee or catching himself on his questionable right arm, he felt a gauntleted hand catch him at forearm and shoulder, setting him back on balance. His eyes met Fenris' for a moment, and he nodded a brief, silent thanks as Fenris drew back. 

“Rules mean little if they are not followed,” Fenris conceded, as though the stumble had never happened. “But I still doubt if they are so completely ignored as you claim.”

“Not completely, not all the time,” agreed Anders. “But they always can be, if the Knight-commander doesn't feel like abiding by them. Which makes them no different from any other rule that might be enforced, or not, at one person's whim.”

Fenris frowned, considering, and reached out a hand absentmindedly to help Anders up a sharp rise in the trail. “Perhaps not,” he said. “If there is-” He broke off at an interruption from further up the trail.

“Would you two stop debating philosophy and come look for treasure with us?” demanded Hawke. “I think I liked it better when you were still squabbling like feral cats. You were easier to keep on task.”

Fenris half-smiled, an odd, ironic little expression, as though surprised by his own pleasure, and jerked his head up. “We should catch up before Hawke crumbles into dust from impatience,” he said.

Anders nodded seriously, laughter flashing in his eyes. “A very serious threat,” he agreed

“You are coming to cards tomorrow?” 

“To lose more of my coin to you lot? Of course.”

“We could speak more about this, after cards. If you wish.” Fenris' voice was carefully neutral. 

Anders smiled. “Of course.”

“If you bring another batch of tea I will pay you for it. I am out.”

“Fenris you don't have to pay for the tea. It's a gift.”

“Call it a donation then. For your mission of mercy.” 

The idealistic words felt strange on his lips, his native cynicism twisting them a little. But strange though it felt, he meant them. Naive and foolish Anders might be, but Fenris could not accuse him of being insincere in his efforts to help. And Fenris might not have enough faith left to pour himself out in futile efforts to repair a harsh and broken system. But he could afford the price of a packet of tea for someone who did.

“As you like. Tomorrow then.”

“Tomorrow.”


End file.
